given that the uphill stretches began almost immediately. Sandy Casar, Grischa Niermann, Patrick Calcagni, Jurgen Van de Walle, and Alessandro Bertolini slipped away and, thanks to a helpful tailwind, built up a 3'30" advantage by the mark. Their eventual maximum advantage was just less than seven minutes. and led the chase. By to go, the break's lead was reduced to 20 seconds, and Niermann tried to solo in the rest of the way. Eventually, the riders were all together again, though the escape had allowed Casar to be first over the day's climbs and win enough points to take the green jersey from Moisés Aldape. led the peloton through the final kilometers – although they had lost their leader Alessandro Petacchi in the previous stage, they still had other strong sprinters on their squad, riders who would have normally been Petacchi's last leadout man. They set up the sprint with Mirco Lorenzetto in mind, but leader Robbie McEwen followed their wheels and timed his acceleration just right to take his second stage win of this Giro. Aside from three riders, the entire peloton finished the stage together, meaning the day's effect on the overall standings was virtually nil – the only change was Bettini's second-place time bonus moving him from 11th to 10th. Stage 5 11 May 2006 — Piacenza to Cremona (team time trial) After the rest day and transfer to Italy, the fifth stage was a team time trial (TTT). A favorite discipline of second-year race director Angelo Zomegnan, this was the first TTT in the Giro in 17 years. The course was flat and favored powerful squads like and . The dominance of the Lance Armstrong-led Discovery Channel team in recent years in TTT's in the Tour de France had had that race institute a rule limiting time losses in the general classification for individual riders finishing together. The Giro did not institute this rule, however, and only real time was taken on the stage. There was a slight tailwind blowing on the day, and the course was reduced in length slightly from the planned length of , which was expected to make for limited time gaps. , led by points classification leader Robbie McEwen, set the early time to beat, coming home in 38'05" and bettering the times of and . The next team on the course was , who were composed of climbers and not